This week, France is not just clearing up after its worst floods in decades. Its citizens have also moved into their third month of resistance to government plans aimed at reforming the country’s labour regulations. And as the Euro 2016 football tournament approaches, a failure to settle this long-running dispute could hit the host country hard.

The French government’s proposed employment reforms have seen strong opposition since March, and have led to large collaborative protests. Students and unions came together on 31 March with a massive general strike attended by over 1.2 million people, and this event sparked the ‘Nuit Debout‘ (or ‘Night on Our Feet’) movement – which has organised people’s assemblies and occupied city squares.

Opponents of the proposed changes have said they will reduce workers’ rights and make it easier for companies to fire their employees. According to some polls, up to 70% of the French population is against the reforms, and over 1.3 million people have now signed an online petition opposing the changes.

A government under pressure

The government plans – referred to by some as “the bosses law” – have so far prompted strike action from railway and Metro workers, from employees of 16 out of France’s 19 nuclear power stations, and from Paris refuse collectors. Air France pilots have also threatened to strike. There have also been protests at most oil refineries and fuel-handling ports in the country.
Read more at thecanary.co

Electricity production across France dropped yesterday, Thursday, after workers in all 19 nuclear power stations voted to begin strikes to defend workers’ rights. Around 80 picketing workers set up a barricade of burning tyres in front of the Gravelines station.

The government is already scrambling to cope with strikes in all eight oil refineries and blockades of fuel depots. Dipping into France’s strategic oil reserves hasn’t stopped an acute petrol shortage. A vote to strike by workers at France’s main oil import terminal will only increase it.

“The rest were to follow this morning. Electricity will certainly have to be imported.”

Striking workers and supporters cut off both fuel depots on the island of Corsica. CGT official Jean-Michel Biondi said, “We’re joining the national protest movement against the Work Law and our action will continue.

“There aren’t many workers in the depots and the bosses want to intervene to make sure the fuel gets out, but we’re not going to let them.”

The escalation of strikes against a proposed Work Law last week has demonstrated vividly how workers keep society running—and how they can shut it down.
Read more at socialistworker.co.uk

Iceland has had a difficult past few months politically, as its Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunlaugsson became the first casualty of the Panama Papers.

Economically however, the story is more upbeat, as the country has rebounded since the financial crisis. The Icelandic Krona has stabilized against the Euro, the rate of change in inflation has slowed, and the country has recorded year-over-year growth in GDP each year since 2011.

However, in a shocking turn of events, a law passed on May 22 by Iceland’s parliament is offering the foreign holders of about $2.3 billion worth of krona-denominated bonds a choice of either selling out in June at a below-market exchange rate, or have the money they receive upon maturity be impounded indefinitely in low interest bank accounts. In other words, Iceland is trying to kick out foreign investors.
Read more at zerohedge.com

Iceland’s anti-establishment Pirate Party continues to lead nationwide polls as the most popular choice for the next elections. The party — whose policies include internet freedom, drug decriminalisation, and open democracy — has consistently led the polls for the last year and, as a result, has secured more funding than any of its rivals.

The 2008 financial crisis hit Iceland hard. The following year, the krona was devalued by around 50%, unemployment doubled, and capital controls were introduce. Miraculously, the country rose from the ashes to become one of Europe’s top performers in terms of growth. More recently, the political establishment has been in turmoil since three government ministers were implicated in the global Panama Papers scandal.

Despite their struggle, or perhaps because of it, the list of reasons to admire Icelanders keeps on growing. Whether it’s the sentencing of senior bankers — or the mass outrage at the offshore leak, which propelled 10% of the population to the streets and ousted the Prime Minister — the radical refusal of Icelanders to bow down and accept establishment corruption is admirable.

Because of this, the surge in popularity of the once-fringe Pirate Party comes as little surprise — recent polls suggest almost half the nation supports them. In Iceland, financial support for political parties is allocated based on how well they have done in polls.
Read more at theantimedia.org

by Zen Gardner
We hereby officially notify all those complicit in this massive control program that:

We are aware of your efforts to dumb down, anesthetize and control the world’s populations.

We are aware of your destructive programs to sicken and alter humanity through the chemical, electromagnetic and genetic modification of our food, plants, animals and ourselves.

We are aware of your wanton destruction of our earth, skies and oceans through resource exploitation, geoengineering and weather modification.

We are aware of your many false flag events and surreptitious “strategy of tension” schemes purposely designed to keep the world in perpetual fear and continual wars against fabricated outside enemies for control and profit.

We are aware of your fascist medical designs to drain and destroy humanity via the decrepit allopathic medical system based on profit and ill health at every level, including the proliferation of pharmaceuticals, invasive and debilitating treatments and deliberately damaging vaccines.

We are aware of your moves toward a worldwide police state based on hyperbolized fear and disinformation to manipulate humanity in order to get an unspoken imprimatur to execute your program of control and subjugation.

We are aware that your political crony establishment is all staged and designed to distract from the real issues and keep the populace occupied and feeling like participants while you work your nefarious program.

We are aware of your falsely imposed vampiristic taxation system to fund further bureaucratic bloat, controls and an overarching agenda of genocidal wars on innocent peoples, and that it is arbitrary and our sovereign choice to simply not participate in any longer.

We are aware that a select few major corporations with vested interests in this global agenda now control almost all media and that mass media is nothing more than a mouthpiece of propaganda to these ends.

We are aware that your “entertainment” industry is simply socially engineered entrainment towards personal and social distraction, chaos and degradation.

We are aware of your AI, electromagnetic grid and mind manipulating designs and technologies that are being imposed to further expand your psychopathic control program.

We are aware that you repress emerging technologies that threaten existing parasitic profitable ones, such as the hazardous petroleum and nuclear industries, when alternative energy sources and other such solutions have arisen for many decades which you have suppressed.

We are aware that you sequester knowledge and information in a vast array of fields to keep the general populace in the dark and thereby disempowered as to our true historical context, while you are coveting secret information and carrying out advanced covert research for your own ends.

We are aware that you have stigmatized, marginalized and seek to outlaw any form of criticism, questioning or dissent using whatever excuse you can manufacture.

We are aware of your oppressive, enslaving monetary and legal control scams, private fractionalized banking pillaging, and twisted cravings for money and power in an imposed control system that never needed to exist in the first place.

We are aware of your falsely postured institutions, foundations, institutes, charitable organizations and international bodies such as the so-called United Nations and its many agencies and agendas being used to further develop your global control plans and programs.

We are aware of your secret societies, blood line allegiances and luciferian, freemasonic, Babylonian and otherworldy roots that propel the wickedness of your self appointed leaders. We are aware of your ritual sacrifices, paedophelia and bestiality inclinations and other sordid practices, all of which are anathema to our conscious race.

Armed militia seize fed building in stand against US governmentBREAKING: FBI en route to Oregon Federal Building occupation with scores of fully armed agents
Heavily armed and well-equipped federal agents have arrived in Oregon from various parts of the U.S. to gain tactical advantage over the armed patriot group who commandeered a federal building Saturday, by responding swiftly and with force if necessary.

Additionally, political figures have been placed under an unofficial public gag order and were instructed to not talk about the situation. So far major mainstream coverage of the event has been limited.
Read more at thedailysheeple.com

Every Icelander will receive about US$232,802 for the sale of one of the country’s three largest banks, Islandsbanki.

Creditors of the failed bank proposed the nationalisation of Islandsbanki, in which they hold a majority stake. The move will help Iceland lift capital controls imposed after the 2008 financial meltdown and will give Icelanders a fair share of the failed bank’s sale.

Finance Minister Bjarni Benediktsson announced in late October that the government will take “some decided portion, five per cent, and simply hand it over to the people of this country.” Icelanders took control of their government, so they now own the banks.
Read more at www.australiannationalreview.com

The BBC here in the UK never ran this story. I guess they do not want us to know.

Greek banks have reopened after weeks of closure. The patient and orderly way customers queued outside to use ATMS during the big shut down was an impressive sight, especially for those people who are fond of considering Greek people as somehow incapable of doing things right.

But nothing is harmonious. The queues outside the job centres are as long as ever, while many of the shops that shut down at the same time as the banks, still haven’t reopened. Anti-austerity and anti-governmental protests have started to take place for the first time since Syriza came to power. Dozens were arrested as the Greek parliament voted to accept a new bailout deal from Europe, based on the very terms that were rejected just days earlier in a national referendum. Fresh riots took place as the parliament passed a law that allows the confiscation of people’s homes.

As Syriza burns its bridges with the general public, life for the majority of people has returned to hopeless normality – indeed, many people have spent more time talking about the wildfires that have broken out around the country than the troika in the past few days.
Read more at Greek Reporter

The Greek parliament just voted, in a 229 for and 64 against landslide, to implement the austerity Europe demands to grant Greece the funds for Bailout #3 so that Greece can then repay European creditors (as opposed to facing up to the pain imminently and suffering through a Grexit) implicitly giving up their sovereignty and sending their 61% “Oxi” voting citizenry into what will inevitably be an even deeper economic depression.Read more at Zero Hedge

They should have voted the other way. Surely now the Greek people will rise up and take back their country from the vultures of Europe. The people have had their democracy stolen. The government is full of traitors who do not care about the people who they were elected to serve.

Iceland also allowed bankers to be prosecuted as criminals – in contrast to the US and Europe, where banks were fined, but chief executives escaped punishment.

The proof that Iceland’s decision six years ago is now baring fruits could trigger a world wide revolution – something that the elites are desperately trying to keep a lid on.

The chief executive, chairman, Luxembourg ceo and second largest shareholder of Kaupthing, an Icelandic bank that collapsed, were sentenced in February to between four and five years in prison for market manipulation.

“Why should we have a part of our society that is not being policed or without responsibility?” said special prosecutor Olafur Hauksson at the time. “It is dangerous that someone is too big to investigate – it gives a sense there is a safe haven.”
Read more at Neonnettle

Last night on UK television we had a debate from all our party leaders in the run up to the General Election on the 7th May 2015. A heckler from the audience did not agree with the lies and voiced Her opinion (brilliant). The 99% need to take back the power from the liars and cheats that try to control us. Government’s support corporations and not the people who elected them, this needs to stop.

Changing the World

I search the internet for items that concern me and repost to share with others, I always put a link to the original website for continued reading. I also write my own posts when I want to share my feelings about our world.